Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!130!10!Linda.Iverson From: Linda.Iverson@f10.n130.z1.fidonet.org (Linda Iverson) Newsgroups: misc.handicap Subject: Command of English Message-ID: <17878@bunker.UUCP> Date: 28 Feb 91 15:59:22 GMT Sender: wtm@bunker.UUCP Reply-To: Linda.Iverson@f10.n130.z1.fidonet.org Distribution: misc Organization: FidoNet node 1:130/10 - D D Connection, Fort Worth TX Lines: 62 Approved: wtm@bunker.UUCP Index Number: 13727 [This is from the Silent Talk Conference] Hi, James! Hope you don't mind my two cents here--probably worth only a penny these days (Smile)! As you know, I'm blind, so what I say comes from that perspective. However, I do believe some of the issues--public school, residential, etc., are familiar to me because they're also tossed around in the blindness community. From what I've seen the real competency of a person with a sensory deprivztion comes from his family, teachers, and as Annie-Which said, from being with others and being allowed to participate in their world and treated as one of them. You know Helen Keller was known as an author and lecturer. She lost her sight and hearing at 19 months old. I have read several of her books and find her writing somewhat stilted, but that might have been her stule and deafness would have nothing to do with it. Remember, she was the first deaf-blind person taught to speak in this country. From what I've read more time was spent on her overall education than speech. I have heard recordings of her and though I could understand her found her speech not nearly as good as that of other deaf people I've met. I realize there's a difference in a recording than a live person. But still if she could accomplish so much with limited training, think what others can do who have more. Again, though she was encouraged and it was assumed she had potential. I think people have a desire to communicate and will do so simply to survive. I believe as disabled adults we need to get out there and tell these parents and teachers to look toward the future of the kids. Some day they'll be on their own and they need to be as competent as possible. When you've talked about some of the mainstream students you've gotten who didn't know things, I think it's because they were not given responsibility and choices that most parents start out giving their toddlers. Ask the child if he/she wants milk or juice, for example; then let the child know his choice will stick. One of the children in my son's school is deaf. At the beginning of the school year we had a breakfast for all the parents and students. I was standing in line behind this girl. When the mother asked her what she wanted of the available choices she told her. Her mother was off somewhere else. How could this child have been able to go through the line as easily--she could have pointed at her choice or written it, but it seems to me it wouldn't have been as fast. I believe the skills we acquire because of our ASL--coping in general, make us more competent, but the world is geared for the able-bodied and I believe we need to learn to fit in. Like Ann, I think of myself as a person who happens to be blind. Yes, it determines how I do some things, but I have more important things to do than dwell on my blindness. Anyway, I think Helen Keller did a lot for all of us. Just think what she could have done with a computer!! Take care, Linda -- Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!130!10!Linda.Iverson Internet: Linda.Iverson@f10.n130.z1.fidonet.org